Feasibility of a Passenger Rail Travel System between Cranbrook and Golden

 

Archana Ramakrishnan

November 2025

 

This paper assesses the feasibility and public value of introducing passenger rail service between Golden and Cranbrook in the British Columbia region, a 300-km corridor broadly aligned with Highway 95 and today served only by highway and freight rail. The study plans to integrate multi-layer demand modeling with network, operations, and equity analysis to answer the questions: (1) What is the potential ridership across tourism and essential travel segments? (2) Under what operating concepts can passenger and freight traffic coexist on shared infrastructure without degrading freight performance? (3) What station, timetable and service design choices maximize benefits relative to cost and risk?

 

The study estimates demand with a seven-zone origin-destination model, generalized cost summaries of time, monetary cost, access, and reliability, and segmentation of trips into tourism and essential travel. It tests the freight and passenger coexistence through slot planning, scheduled meets, and targeted upgrades to passing sidings across several service designs, including one to four daily round trips using diesel multiple units or locomotive-hauled trains. Preliminary results indicate that coexistence is plausible with disciplined timetables, that ridership is driven by summer tourism and steady regional trips, and that access improves most in communities with few alternatives to private cars. The study provides reusable data templates to support subsequent engineering, cost-benefit, and policy analysis.

 

Link to Study